11.11.2009

Hiatus...

Yeah, I know it’s been awhile… a long while. Just over a year now, in fact. It’s not that I didn’t have anything to write about… quite the opposite, actually. In some ways, I almost had too much to write about, and couldn’t get the thoughts organized. Basically, in the end, it came down to “Life got in the way”.

It’s not the first time I’ve taken a hiatus. It happens during correspondences with friends (e-mail or when I used to write actual letters), journal writing, hobbies, cooking, or most any other good habit I tried to set over the years. It doesn’t mean I don’t care about the people, or appreciate the activities… immediate issues became a distraction, and next thing you know: days, weeks, and maybe months go by.

When I turned 14, in 1989, I started a journal. (It wasn’t a “diary”… that’s for girls. Guys write “journals”… such was my reasoning concerning certain synonyms) I began it on my birthday, as a matter of fact... a small blue book. That day I had also watched Batman (the Tim Burton one) in the theater, and had considered it, literally, to be the greatest movie ever made. Much of that first entry was gushing about how I think it should win all kinds of Academy Awards, and how great it was, etc… it was typical kid-geeking-out, I admit, and nothing as truly deep and thought-provoking as I once thought it was. But it had started, what I hope, was going to be a nice habit or tradition.

Side note: It also began a tradition of seeing the current Batman movie in the theater, ON my birthday. The first time I moved away from that, was with Batman & Robin… and I used to think that was why it sucked. (I did a bit of unnecessary apologizing for it.) But in reality… it was Joel Schumacher. I re-started the tradition with Batman Begins, and it returned to greatness. Unfortunately, The Dark Knight, the best one yet, didn’t even open until after my birthday… so the tradition is fully broken. But I don’t mind so much, cause it was that good. (Okay, so maybe some things concerning geeking-out don’t change as much as we hope).

I didn’t resolve to write in that journal every day or week… I never did set down an idea of a schedule to try and keep to. Sometimes I’d write into it a few days in a row… other times, it’d go a few months without. I wrote when I felt like I had something to say or get off my chest. So, there ended up being a lot of pauses in the writing… a number of hiatuses.

But throughout High School, and then into college (where the writing became even more sporadic)… I did eventually fill up that little blue book, and then started a second volume in a little red book. That one… eventually got filled too. Then I started a third one, a multi-colored one... which never got filled. To this day, there’s still a lot of blank pages in the latter half of it. In fact, the very last entry to it was written on my very first night in California… when I flew out there by myself to try and find an apartment to live in, before I made the drive with all my stuff just before Graduate School started.

I don’t even have to look in that book to remember what I felt that night. I was scared out of my gourd. I was in my early 20s… had never travelled alone before. And while I had been involved with a road trip to Athens, Georgia… and a weekend train-trip to Washington D.C., those had both been with friends… But I had never been in a different TIME ZONE so far away from everything and everyone that I ever knew… and completely on my own. To attend a school I hadn’t even seen in person (and the stress of not having an apartment and actually feeling “homeless”). Even though it was because I felt I *had* to get out of where I had been… I was wondering, and even wrote this down in that little journal, if I had just made the biggest mistake of my life. I felt so intimidated; I could barely sleep in that room on the second floor of the Motel 6. (Which was another first for me… renting a hotel room by myself.) That was the very last entry I ever wrote… and that was just over 10 years ago.

While the story of my Grad School experience (especially the beginning) could be a post on its own (maybe some day)… I am happy to say that it WASN’T the biggest mistake of my life… in fact, it was probably one of the best things I’ve ever done, overall. While the cliff-hanger nature of that journal entry doesn’t sound so promising… I ended up learning a lot about myself… made some really good friends early on, learned a lot about my chosen field, had a great time, and I think became a better, more self-reliant person because of it. (Well, I sort of HAD to on that one.)

I’ve thought about going back to that little multi-colored journal and picking it up again on the next blank page… but I really think that too much time has passed. Because when I come off a hiatus, I feel the need to ‘recap’ what happened during that pause in writing. And… well, too much has happened. There’s no way to be able to condense it down to even fit IN the rest of that book, just to be able to get to whatever was bothering me currently. Nah, besides… I think it’s more interesting to leave it as a cliff-hanger for whatever unknown, unseen future reader that might happen to see it. Whether that’s a descendant, a lover, or some stranger picking it up at a Garage Sale.

Besides, I’ve got the blog for all soul-bearing. Plus, I think I’m a little more articulate then I was when I started at 14 (well… except maybe for the Geek stuff).

Now, I’m not going to promise that I’ll write with the frequency I did before… that was my New Year’s Resolution for that year, to write regularly in the blog. And as I actually ended up with more blogposts then I originally thought I would, (It was originally “once every other week”, and then I upped it to “once a week”) I feel okay saying that resolution was fulfilled. (My resolution for this year was to “get into Boston more often”… which I’ve done pretty good with as well.) From here forward, I’ll post when I’ve gotten something written. Maybe once a week, maybe 3 times a week, maybe once a month or more. I’m not going to worry about schedules.

I do have several ideas lined up to write about… and I will get to them. Starting with the next post about the event that started off the hiatus (which happened just after the last post). Then I’ve got things and subjects that have happened in the last year, things I’ve tried, and things I’m thinking of trying. Now, I know I never had that many readers (frankly, I never felt it was the sole purpose of a blog), at least to my knowledge… but maybe you’ll find yourself back here too.

6 comments:

Woohoo! A new post!!! That answers my questions--you're definitely alive (I don't claim to have the answers on what happens in the afterlife, but I've never thought that blogging for mortals would be one of those activities), and you must be relatively well. Yippee! =)

No pressure. Post when you're able/feel like it.

DS was just watching part of Batman (Tim Burton) a couple weeks ago(the ending).

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